


The Winter Soldier's Best Worst Christmas Ever

by Lasgalendil



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Brock Rumlow isn't a bad guy, Bucky Barnes Returns, Christmas Fluff, HYDRA Trash Party, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, The Winter Soldier's Best Christmas Ever, just a 'bad guy'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 07:29:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5531006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasgalendil/pseuds/Lasgalendil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brock Rumlow wasn't a bad guy. Just...a bad guy. And what's a former-HYDRA operative on the run from Captain America, SHIELD, and especially the Winter Soldier to do when a completely docile Asset shows up expecting a repeat of last year's Christmas party?</p><p>...Invite him in for eggnog. That's what you do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Winter Soldier's Best Worst Christmas Ever

Christmas. Fucking. Sucked.  
  
Bright lights. Loud noises. Crowded spaces. Godawful muzak. Yes, James Buchanan Barnes was awake and alive for Christmas for probably the first time since 1945 and he _hated_ it. He absolutely fucking hated it. “What about the 40’s? 30’s?” Steve asked about decorating for the uptenth time. “You know. Nothing to fancy or elaborate.”  
  
“Just like old times,” Bucky finished morosely. “You know, all those old times I don’t damn remember and you keep damned forgetting about.”  
  
“Alright, alright,” Steve soothed, rolled with his verbal punches, the fucking pacifist traitor. “What about we just get a tree, and some stockings? Hot cocoa. Just you and me?”  
  
“That sucks, Stevie. _I_ suck. You don’t have to stay home because of me.”  
  
So Stevie sat down next to him. Didn’t dare touch him, didn’t dare even brush up against him. After 70 years, after childhood sweethearts, war brides, after nights in the Italian theater fucking each other senseless, this was as close as they could get. It made Bucky want to spit. “Buck, Buck, look at me. I love you. I know this is rough—“  
  
“You don’t have any damned idea—“  
  
“So you’re not the same. _I’m_ not the same. I’ve been a hundred people in my life and every one of them has loved every version of you.”  
  
“Yeah? This version?” Bucky sat up. “The I killed kids for terrorists version? The I had sex with one of your best friends when she was a goddamned _child_ and I don’t even remember? The I can’t even watch tv, can’t listen to the radio unless JARVIS filters it ‘cause any subliminal messaging from HYDRA can still turn me into a murderbot and kill you in your sleep version? The can’t even have sex or touch his boyfriend _can’t even touch himself_ because of all the shit they did to him version? Yeah. He sounds like a real winner. You’re so goddamned lucky, Stevie.”  
  
“I love you,” Stevie said stubbornly.  
  
“No, you don’t.”  
  
“I love you, James Buchanan Barnes. I love you.”  
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
Steve sighed. Steve had to turn away to hide his gesture of mild annoyance and disapproval because his boyfriend was so fucking fucked up that the smallest hint of displeasure could send him into a panic attack, begging at his feet not to be punished, not to be wiped, frozen, raped.  
  
Yeah. That James Buchanan Barnes guy was such a winner. Such a goddamned _catch_.  
  
“I’m going to the gym,” Steve’s voice rang, not a trace of anger or emotion to be heard. “There’s some shakes in the fridge. I’ll have JARVIS remind you to eat. Don’t wait up—no, sorry, Buck. Let me rephrase: please don’t stay up too late. You know it’s important you stick to a schedule.”  
  
Steve Rogers loved him. Every version of him. Even the psychotic Soviet assassin. Steve Rogers was an insufferable saint. And Bucky Barnes was a moody, unstable, neurotic mess. Sometimes he thought the kindest thing he could’ve done would be pushing Stevie away. What sort of guy waits for you seventy-plus years and refuses to give up on you, risking his life and the lives of the entire fucking planet on the batshit theory you were still in there?  
  
  
‘Steven Grant “’TIl The End of The Line” Rogers, that’s who.  
  
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. Fuck him. Fuck me. It was midnight. It was Christmas.  
  
…Goddamnit. He’d missed Hanukkah again. Not like his old man ever really let his mom celebrate. But he remembered sneaking out with Becca as a kid sometimes and stealing away to aunts’ and uncles’ houses for eight nights where the cousins had dark hair and curls like him instead of the blonde hair, blue eyes of the Barnes’ cousins, where they weren’t looked down on as ‘you knows’ or ‘filthy little mongrels’ or ‘goddamned kikes’, where he didn’t get his ass whipped or his face slapped for punching Benny Barnes’ teeth in when he asked about his  ‘little fairy friend’. He didn’t remember much, had only been a goddamned kid, but it felt nice, those memories. Something unexplored even to the real, past him. Something inextricable, but new.  
  
Great going, Buck. He’d fucked this year up for sure. Just like he’d fucked up the last seventy.  
  
Okay. Okay. Next year, next year he was dragging his ass to the festival of the lights and he was doing it right. Then he was going to celebrate the biggest, most lavish, ridiculous Christmas to the level of Tony Stark dialed up to eleven. Why not both? Next year he’d be happy, he’d be human, he’d be on the right meds and he’d be able to fucking eat food and remember to bathe and actually be able to actually fuck with his actual boyfriend.  
  
And he was crying. What a fairy. What a fag.  
  
Next year, Bucky thought miserably, laying his face down against the couch, curling into his knees, cursing himself to stop. Next year…  
  
Next year. The Asset opened its eyes. They were wet. It didn’t know why.

 

.

  
  
Okay, so HYDRA fucking sucked. It wasn’t as if Brock Rumlow didn’t know what he was getting into, didn’t know that in order to bring about World Peace he was going to have to do some pretty awful shit to get there. That didn’t bother him.  
  
…What bothered him was the sheer level of _fucking incompetence_ that led to the disaster at the Triskellion last year and the loss of the Asset. He should really be more bothered that to date the Asset had tracked and killed its previous Handlers and WINTER SOLDIER STRIKE Teams pretty much down to the man save he and Rollins and they were living on borrowed time, but honestly, yeah. Who pulls the Asset out of cryo to kill Black Widow and Captain America? Seriously. Seriously did anyone even fucking bother to read the guy’s _tragic fucking backstory._ Jesus Christ no wonder the mind wipes didn’t hold. No fucking wonder the Asset refused to kill Rogers. Turned Rogue. Hunted down HYDRA across six continents. Really. Really. The perfect killer, the perfect weapon, and none of the higher-ups had even fucking considered—? The level of ineptitude made him sick.  
  
Losing the Asset was a blow to HYDRA. Cut off one head, two more shall grow in its place his ass. HYDRA might never recover.  
  
So Brock Rumlow and Jack Rollins were on the run. From the Winter Solder, from SHIELD, and especially from Captain America who for some unfathomable reason took personal offense that HYDRA had used his childhood best friend/possibly lover as a weapon/punching bag/sex toy. Rumlow had never really liked those last two functions, hadn’t enjoyed those torture sessions at all, felt fucking bad—felt fucking awful—about the rapes and abuse but if you wanted to work with the Winter Soldier—the Fist of Hydra, the best fucking assassin on the entire planet—you had to prove your ability to see him as inhuman.  
  
“It’s not personal, buddy,” he’d whispered a dozenhundredthousand times. Whispered then shoved an electrified baton up that ass until the Asset was screaming in pain, semen dripping out of that limp cock.  
  
Rollins agreed it was fucking sick. Fucking messed up. So if they sort of made it up to The Asset on missions and  if The Asset had arrived at Extractions dripping vomit and diarrhea from all the sweets, dressed in comfy sweaters and slippers, still covered in glitter from all the strippers and reeking of alcohol. Well. He and Rollins knew nothing about it.  
  
“FUCK!” he heard Rollins shout. “FUCK! BROCK, ASSET!”  
  
Well, Brock thought. It was about damned time. Today was as good a day as any to die.  
  
  
But ‘The Asset’ was unarmed. ‘The Asset’ was barefoot. ‘The Asset’ was in his PJ’s.  
  
That didn’t fool Rumlow. The fucking Asset could kill a platoon with his bare hands. But the Asset didn’t look murderous. The Asset didn’t even look blank. The Asset looked fucking _happy._  
  
There was a long, uncomfortable silence, wherein he and Jack stared at The Asset, and the Asset stared at them. The only sound was the snow melting and dripping off The Asset’s hair and clothes.  
  
“Uh, Soldier?” Brock asked, his voice strained.  
  
“Awaiting Orders, Sir.”  
  
Brock blinnked. “Soldier?”  
  
“It is Christmas, sir. Next year, Sir. Mission Parameters: let’s do this again next year, sir.”  
  
Rumlow and Rollins looked at each other. What the fuck—?  
  
“Next year, Sir. Mission parameters specified next year, sir. It is next year, sir. It is Christmas, sir.”  
  
The Asset. Had come home. For Christmas. What. The actual. Fuck.

"Awaiting orders, sir?” The Assset whined. The Asset hated being kept waiting. Waiting meant punishment. Waiting meant pain. “Last year’s orders included—“  
  
Well, hell. Brock remembered last year’s orders. They’d played fucking beer pong with the Winter Soldier, they played how much alcohol did it take for the Winter Soldier to lose his aim at darts with the Winter Soldier, they played decorate the Winter Soldier like a fucking Christmas Tree, they played how many Christmas Carols could the Asset memorize, they played the Winter Soldier was their own personal Christmas jukebox with the Winter Soldier, they played who could teach the Winter Soldier the most ridiculous trick for a slice of ham with the Winter Soldier, followed by whose turn was it to hold the hair back from the toilet with the Winter Soldier as he puked up a good two pounds of ham, played convince the Winter Soldier that Santa Claus was a mastermind strategist and enemy of HYDRA, played give the Asset Christmas presents (there weren’t many options, but the Asset had received a spoon, a fork, a package of toilet paper, and all his own fucking weapons and was beaming like…like a kid at fucking Christmas) all culminating in waking up with the world’s worst headaches and the fucking Winter Soldier having disappeared and being convinced he’d relapsed into pre-Identity and they’d lost the fucking Asset in a fucking snow storm and Pierce would have their fucking heads. But before they could panic, flee the country, or commit hari kari the Winter Soldier had appeared covered in snow and blood to say “Target terminated. Mission complete” and fell the fuck unconscious from the combined hypothermia and alcohol poisoning.  
  
The Winter Soldier was one bad-ass son of a bitch. Or, whoever the hell invented that programming was. Even drunk (and probably high. There’d been an unhealthy amount of coke snorted and Brock couldn’t remember that part of the night to save his fucking life) the Winter Soldier remembered and fucking completed his mission. Brock really didn’t want to think about the parameters of that mission since it involved killing an Eastern European presidential hopeful and his entire fucking family on Christmas and framing a member of the domestic staff, but hey. Merry Christmas.  
  
The Asset was smiling. Looking back and forth between them hopefully.  
  
Brock looked at Rollins. Rollins looked at Brock.  
  
They really ought to be calling HYDRA. The fucking Winter Soldier just walked into their flat, completely helpless, utterly docile. Programming intact. They really, really ought to be phoning this in.  
  
…but it was Christmas. And Brock really, really felt bad about all those rapes.  
  
“Uh….want some eggnog?” Rollins finally broke the awkward silence.  
  
“Eggnog is not specified on the Asset’s diet, sir.”  
  
“Didn’t stop you last year,” Brock grunted.  
  
“Yes, please sir.”


End file.
